pbh

12 ms·

61.
by pbh 16y ago
I believe GNU sort is a single-threaded external multi-pass/multi-way mergesort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_sorting The reason to split is not to replicate mergesort, but rather to get around single threading in GNU sort. Of c
62.
by pbh 16y ago
Personally, I would run: split -d -C 1G FILE split.FILE # separate into 1G files on line boundaries # then, on separate cores sort -u split.FILE.00 -o sort.FILE.00 sort -u split.FILE.01 -o sort.FILE.01 ... sort -u split.FILE.N
63.
by pbh 16y ago
I don't disagree, but it seems like you're overstating your point by calling OOP "optional" in Scala (and possibly F#). Scala is explicitly marketed as a hybrid OOP/functional language. At least from "Programming in Scala," it seems as tho
64.
by pbh 16y ago
I 100% agree, but think there is no chance of this happening. The incentives simply do not line up, and some sort of all-or-nothing transition is needed. It's not (exactly) my community, but SIGMOD has been trying to do this since 2008 wit
65.
by pbh 16y ago
I had the same problem (and, really, 5 years?), but "solved" it at the time with ISO8601 strings. They sort, they're standard, they support microseconds, they're fairly common in web services. Slower than a reasonable native type though,
66.
by pbh 16y ago
My ill informed opinion: the WSGI specification (i.e., PEP 333) together with a decade or so of cross-pollination seems to have made most Python web frameworks more similar than different. You can opt for more out of the box functionality
67.
by pbh 16y ago
I completely agree. My intent was to suggest that one should learn to the standard first rather than any particular implementation, not that one should read any of the actual standards documents directly. (Yikes!) By analogy, if you want
68.
by pbh 16y ago
I want to be careful in how I phrase this, because I feel like this was a good effort, but I disagree with many parts of this description. First, databases are not "just" about persistence, and I don't mean that in a pedantic way. The poin
69.
by pbh 16y ago
I asked a very similar question to this on MetaFilter a few weeks ago. To summarize, I think you're actually conflating three things: design, graphic design, and graphic design for the web. As far as I can tell as a non-designer, there see
70.
by pbh 17y ago
Obviously, everyone loves a good challenge, but is there any evidence that the find-ee wants to be found? They seemed interested in the thread as to how they might be found, but don't seem to have given any permission for a site-wide (wo-)m
71.
by pbh 17y ago
The Real Player installer, over the course of maybe five to ten years, was so pushy about installing extra, unwanted software and sending private data that it garnered a reputation that caused people to be really careful when installing it,
72.
by pbh 17y ago
I do not have any data regarding opt-in, but my impression was that as a rule, no one opts-in, and no one opts-out of basically anything (excepting the notorious cases, e.g., Real Player). If it worked, and somehow gave an at least somewha
73.
by pbh 17y ago
I think the parent is referring to an element of we-told-you-so in this letter. I think around the "instead, you brushed off our claims" part of the letter. It sounds a bit confrontational, though perhaps it's too late to rewrite.
74.
by pbh 17y ago
It seems to me that any data at all will necessarily reduce the entropy of the probability distribution of members' preferences, likes, dislikes, habits, and so on (i.e., their privacy). The authors seem to brush off the "greater good" arg
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by pbh 17y ago
Related: "Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System," Samidh Chakrabarti, Aaron Strauss. tl;dr Anything other than random is arguably worse.
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by pbh 17y ago
That makes sense. I think the key will be the community norms (and social features to support those norms) that you build, but you seem aware of that. Looking forward to seeing how things evolve!
77.
by pbh 17y ago
I have two top level questions for Kyle if he's still around (even though this isn't an Ask HN or Tell HN or anything). First, what is the problem you are trying to solve? Second, what do you think are/will be the key components of your ap
78.
by pbh 17y ago
It seems like you are looking for a functional answer to this question, and I just signed up to take a look. It looks like twitter + images/screenshots, more or less. You can follow people, users can post text + maybe a screenshot, and the
79.
by pbh 17y ago
After some thought, this sort of seems like it's missing the point. What I'm curious about is what the current state of cookie and user click stream sharing among analytics/advertising companies is. What proportion of my browsing history i
80.
by pbh 17y ago
A more direct way of saying it is that academics at research universities are mostly motivated to publish frequently in reputable places by grants and tenure, and nothing has forced either the way grants or tenure are given out to change fr
81.
by pbh 17y ago
This is a major point in legal philosophy (and presumably elsewhere). I don't think I agree with you (for example) that an adversarial system ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system ) is inherently worse than an inquisitorial one
82.
by pbh 17y ago
This article seems to me to conflate two things: how to have an exploratory discussion between two opposing viewpoints and how to win an argument. For example, in an exploratory discussion, using your opponent's terms can lead to quicker de
83.
by pbh 17y ago
I think that the example you give is actually a very good example of a set of context switches that people regularly deal with poorly, even though they are, as you note, very common. How many server side web developers do you know who can o
84.
by pbh 17y ago
Screencasts seem to me like they are the right tool for explaining standard paths through complex user interfaces. This is especially true of poorly documented and/or very open ended interfaces (e.g., in my case, Emacs or Photoshop). (For
85.
by pbh 17y ago
YHBT. YHL. HAND. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAWDYaWAVQQ "Whatever position I took originally, I would change the position to exactly the opposite and tell the Macintosh people that I was completely wrong and they were completely right
86.
by pbh 17y ago
Regarding the last bit, this exists in a couple forms. The one I can remember at the moment is stickK ( http://www.stickk.com/ ).
87.
by pbh 17y ago
While the web seems to be alight with comparisons of Go to other languages (Python, Lisp, ...), what seems to make this post unique is the comparison of Go to a forty year old language in little common use today. To me at least, this begs a
88.
by pbh 17y ago
Actually, I've been using encfs on Dropbox, and size really isn't much of an issue. In practice, I mostly want to synchronize dot-files and other small files across computers, and broadband to Dropbox isn't terribly slow. The real issue is